A Cow’s Favorite Music Note

For the sake of catching to where my blog posts should actually be, I’ll be covering the events of last week. There was a comical attempt at making two pork butts in intermittent thunderstorms that was a hot mess last month; I may eventually post some pictures.

I’ve finally gotten around to getting a Costco membership since its becoming more and more apparent that it would be economically feasible. This way I don’t have to kidnap Jennifer each time I need to go. A second plus side is that Costco seems to have brisket, duck and ribs fairly regularly. With the two butcher shops that I now have visited, I shouldn’t have any issues with sourcing meat given enough time in advance.

In my inaugural Costco visit, I picked up a brisket flat weighing roughly 10 pounds. That’s the bottom part of the two muscles that make up a full packer brisket; it tends to be a bit more lean. Whenever you go to a Texas barbecue place and they ask you for moist or lean – that’s the lean choice. Moist comes from the point, which is on top. I only just figured this out.

I also picked up a bunch of new goodies, including food-safe heat-resistant gloves for my pansy-ass hands, a (very amusing) spray bottle, a new storage box, new wood chunks and disposable gloves.

I pre-seasoned the brisket the night before with salt and pepper again. I’m going to have to remix a batch soon of the rub, but that’s probably one of the easier things involved in this process.

Pre-heated to 275 and threw it on. My new wood chunks are significantly larger than my previous ones. I used four over the course of about two hours.

Over the course of this particular cook, I spent more time outside messing around than usual since it has finally stopped raining after three weeks. I managed to discover some rather commonsense temperature control technique. First, it turns out of you wildly wave around a Tupperware cover near the vents it can temporarily boost the temperature since there’s more air going in. Unfortunately, there’s no pictures of me doing this. Second, spraying the lid on the coal side of the grill can actually quickly drop the temperature because of the sweating effect. I may or may not have just been messing around with my new (and very amusing) spray bottle when I discovered this.

Wrapped around 170 degrees as it exited the stall. The heat-resistant gloves came in pretty handy. Heh. I also turned the brisket 180 degrees to make sure the other side got some heat and spritzed to make sure the color was sticking. I wasn’t quite sure how to wrap it. I ended up using three sheets of aluminum foil to cover the entire thing; I’ll have to spend some more time thinking about how to origami it into looking less stupid. I think I may also try to get some butcher paper next time.

Overall cooking time ended up being about six hours. The temperature hit around 203 only about two or so hours after I wrapped. I let the brisket – still wrapped — rest to about 140 degrees before cutting it.

The brisket is still a bit leaner than I’d prefer it to be. I’m thinking that the temperature maybe too high for just a 10 pound flat – I think the extra hours you get when cooking a full packer brisket helps give the meat more time to cook. I think next time I’ll aim for around 225 to 250.